Microsoft has begun its 2017 with the release of four updates to address security holes in Windows and Office, while Adobe has posted fixes for more than three dozen vulnerabilities in Flash and Reader.
Microsoft's January patch load includes:
MS17-001, a fix for the Edge browser to address a flaw that would let a malicious …

Back in August Adobe reversed its decision to stop offering an NPAPI Flash plugin for Linux and promised that version 23 would come Penguinistas' way real soon now.
At the time the decision was greeted with surprise, because Adobe had not thought to update Flash for Linux since 2012's version 11.2. But the company decided that …

A Flash vulnerability subject to emergency patching by Adobe has been used in all major exploit kits to compromise users not already updated.
The vulnerability (CVE-2015-7645) patched in October last year was the first zero day since Adobe implemented more hardened security.
It was also the most pervasive among the …

Google's long-promised farewell-to-Flash took another step last week , with the Chocolate Factory announcing it's off-by-default for most users, in most cases.
From Chrome 55, Google's browser will check sites to see if they support HTML5. If so, Chrome will run the auto-play video ad proceed to play video; if not, the user …

Flash SSD is changing the way that we store data. Vendors would like you to use it for all of your applications – and you probably will at some point – but which applications does it make most sense for today, and which might you have to work a little harder on to justify its use?
Some rarified high-performance applications …

Today is the second Tuesday of the month, and that means a fresh round of security updates from the likes of Microsoft, Adobe and Google.
The November edition of Patch Tuesday brings with it fixes for Windows, Flash Player, Internet Explorer, Edge, Office and Android.
For Microsoft, the monthly update comprises a total of 14 …

Adobe is advising folks to update Flash Player – as malware is right now exploiting a newly discovered hole in the internet's screen door to hijack Windows PCs.
The emergency patch addresses a single vulnerability, CVE-2016-7855. The use-after-free() programming blunder allows an attacker to achieve remote code execution when …

All-flash arrays are arguably coming of age, but in an early market, with lots of vendors jostling for position and making all kinds of promises, you need to be careful when evaluating options. While most of the historical challenges have been largely neutralised or at least made significantly smaller, there are still some …

Enterprise solid state drives are gaining traction, but their predominant focus is still performance. The need for speed has driven SSDs into applications where HDDs previously reigned, but for those of us who aren’t high-frequency traders, solid state will need to demonstrate some other benefits. What are they, and how …

Sysadmin Blog
RAID is dead. Or maybe it's not. I think it might be off having a conversation with a cat in a box. Regardless of whether or not you use hardware RAID cards or HBAs and some kind of software, the idea of big boxes full of drives that store lots of things isn't going away any time soon. The drives you put in them, however, are …

Mega Patch Tuesday
Microsoft is wrapping up the summer with a dump of 14 bulletins for various security vulnerabilities in its products, while Apple and Adobe are following up with fixes of their own.
The September edition of Patch Update Tuesday sees fixes released for critical issues in Windows, Windows Server, Internet Explorer, Edge, Flash …

Security sentient smut site Pornhub has decommissioned Flash and will swap to HTML5 in a bid to modernise and protect its estimated 60 million daily visitors.
The site is famed for among other things offering a bug bounty to researchers who disclose security holes in the site upping payments and hiring staff to better compete …

Adobe has reversed its decision to kill the NPAPI Flash plugin on Linux, instead deciding that penguinistas deserve some love after four years of neglect.
Adobe's notification of the changes includes news that its beta channel beta now includes test code for version 23 of the Linux NPAPI Flash Player.
Linux NPAPI users have …

The big flash dog has barked: Samsung did its flash dazzlement show at the Flash Memory Summit, with a 32TB SSD, a 1TB BGA, and a high-speed Z-SSD.
The 32TB SSD is built using 64-layer 3D NAND - its V-NAND brand - with TLC - 3bits/cell - orientation.
64-layer V-NAND
The 64-layer TLC V-NAND was revealed at the end of July and …

By the end of the year, Google Chrome will block virtually all Flash content and make whatever's left click-to-play by default.
In September, Chrome 53 will kill off all background Flash content, which is about 90 per cent of Flash on the web, according to Google.
Then in December, Chrome 55 will use HTML5 for video, …

Seagate has added a read-optimised SATA SSD to its Nytro line – the XF1230.
The LSI Nytro SSD line was acquired by Seagate in 2014. This product is a 6Gbit/s SATA drive in a 2.5-inch case and comes with 240GB, 480GB, 960GB and 1.92TB capacities, using eMLC flash. We’re not told the cell geometry or the supplier, but Seagate …

Firefox will next month automatically block invisible Flash content that users cannot see when loading a page, says Mozilla as it continues its campaign against Adobe's plugin.
This should protect netizens from dodgy webpages that load hidden malicious Flash files that attempt to infect their computers with malware or perform …

Adobe says a buggy installer is the reason some people have two different versions of Flash Player on their Windows PCs.
The software house told The Register it had to create an additional build of the browser plugin specifically for Microsoft's Internet Explorer after the version made for other browsers – such as Mozilla's …